Doors
by mooncycle
Summary: Story of the first Matrix hacker to enter the hallway. please R


DOORS  
  
The hallway. The undending corridor of entrances to the Matrix. The millions of backdoors are a mystery to all of Zion. The machine mainframe holds the key. However, no one has hacked that far into the source.... until now. I have hacked it. My name is Frodo. As the well-known Trinity was fond of Alice in Wonderland, I am fond of The Lord of the Rings, hence my name. This is my memoir. It is a history of life before the One. It is a breakdown of how the Matrix is governed. It is the ravings of an old, senile man. Call it whatever you want. I felt the need to write this for a long time, but I had to keep it hidden.... until now.  
I was a crew member on one of Zion's original ships. It was the Marinis. It was actually the second ship completed after the fifth conquest of the machines. (note: only very few of Zion's citizens know of the other conquests or the other versions of the Matrix) It was the only original ship still in service when Trinity was freed from the Matrix. She was trained as an officer on the Marinis before joining Morpheus on his ship. While I served on the ship, I was in charge of hacking the broadcast level. My mind was freed because I had an expertise in both machinery and computers. I guess there aren't too many people who know both computers and machinery inside and out. I was always working on my friends' and family's cars and removing viruses off their systems. Most weekends I'd be home doing odd jobs around the house or helping out at local businesses with maintenance. During my "life" in the Matrix, I never was good at much else. Women, especially. I didn't really have time for women. In fact I never had a real relationship until I was unplugged... but I'm getting ahead of myself.  
Like I said, I was in charge of broadcast hacking. I rarely entered the Matrix myself, because I was the best at getting exits as close as possible. I usually worked overnight, but I was on call 24 hours, of course. The rest of the crew was asleep at nighttime, so I took several opportunities to hack the code and just look at things. Once I found something very odd (or odd in terms of a freed mind). Another ship had sent a gunrunner on a mission, and he had somehow defeated an agent that had entered a human mind. Right at the moment the agent exited the mind, and right before the human's mind fell dead, the code sort of cracked itself. The encryption on the agent morphed into something similar to what shows up after a deja vu. It didn't last for more than a split second, but somehow I memorized every last symbol. I wrote it down on a piece of paper nearby and tried a few experiments, so to speak.  
I found a spot where agents tend to be more common. It is a building that many programs use to sort of "disguise" themselves as regular people. The disguises come in many different styles from agent to acrobat, chef to carpenter, pilot to plumber, and so forth. We already knew that the programs had a central control center for their digital forms (that is, their Matrix forms), we just didn't know where it was. It's kind of like what we call an office building. My theory was that this is where they kept the mainframe. They all organize themselves in to files (seen to the human eye as suites). However, the building's security is made up of human minds. That just doesn't seem to fit, does it? I guess the machines got lazy and decided to save time by using humans. But then again, that's how they do things, using humans.  
I brought up the Construct and made a basic key. I then entered the code from the agent. I probably did something then that was a big mistake on my part. I had to keep a low profile. Those outfits other people use when they enter seem too obvious. I decided on a basic t-shirt and jeans. I set up an exit, and I entered myself into the Matrix. I figured I wouldn't be gone long anyway. I found my way to the building and went to the rear entrance. It was not well lit, and I probably wasn't likely to be seen, but make no mistake, I came prepared. Two sidearms and plenty of ammo. Only the programs and security have access to the rear entrance. At least to the main building...  
I put my key in the hole and entered a small room. I then had the choice of two doors. I picked the on one the right. I opened it. I found myself in a long hallway. Doors as far as the eye can see. I knew right away this wasn't part of the building. I had entered the machine underworld. After the rear entrance I no longer needed a key, for only agents have access past to both the building and the hallway. Everyone else needs a specific key, depending on the door, which is made by the machines. This was the next step to hacking the mainframe. Something led me to a door not even six feet away from me. I opened it, peeked inside, and saw nothing but darkness. I closed it back and tried the door right next to it. Nothing. I tried the door on the other side. Nothing. But somehow, some way, I knew one of those doors had something relevant to me behind it. My first thought was it could be blank discs for writing the "future", possibly even the next few days. I didn't have any more time to stick around, though. My exit was about to open.  
The next morning, I went to bed after my shift. I made the mistake of forgetting the slip of paper I wrote the code on. The Captain came to me in my quarters and inquired about it. I told him about what had happened. He immediately called the crew together to discuss it. We decided to contact Zion and get permission to keep exploring the hallway. They agreed, because they knew the machines would upgrade the code as soon as they knew someone had entered the hallway. After our meeting, Kayla, one of our gunrunners, came up to me and asked me if I thought that one of those doors could be the past. I didn't know, but I was sure ready to find out. She told me that if they did lead to the past, that I could prevent her mother from losing her unborn child, which died after a shooting. Her mother went by the name of Loretta Anderson.  
A shooting didn't seem to make a lot of sense. I always took Kayla to be from a loving and nurturing home, based on her personality. Nurturing or not, her mother had a dead child, not to mention a daughter that was unplugged and was now fighting for the freedom of the human race. Her mother probably believed Kayla died.  
Late that night, while I was at work, Kayla came to me and told me what she remembered. Kayla was about ten at the time. Her mother had been a witness to a bank robbery and was shot. She spent the next few weeks in rehab and came out fine. However, the baby didn't survive. It would've been due in a month or so, and it would've most likely been a boy. Kayla had seen several men in black suits roaming around the hospital while her mom was a patient. The nurses told her they were just security guards. It was then that Kayla began wondering what was going on. After several years of anxiety and confusion, she met a man known as Jude, who freed her mind.  
I wondered right about then, was Kayla's dead brother the One? If he was, then all hope was lost. But then again, if what I believe about the prophecy is true, I can save him, and maybe bring him back. I had no idea of what it would cost to do so.  
I asked Kayla to come with me into the Matrix to see if we could alter or even change the past. She agreed. I set up the exit, and we plugged in. We entered across the street from the building. We usually uploaded a few blocks over, but we needed a closer spot in case the line was traced. I had my key in hand, and we entered the building. We went though the door on the right, and we were in the hallway. I thought to myself, as long as the code hasn't been scrambled, we have a chance. To our luck, it hadn't been. I opened each door one at a time. The first two were the same as before. Nothing. We both had become frustrated at this point. When I tried the third door, a light nearly blinded us (but we knew the light wasn't real). When my eyes finally adjusted (OK, so we forgot it wasn't real), I saw there was another hallway. It looked just like the one we were in, but there were no doors. Odd. We entered the new hallway, and as soon as we stepped away from the door, it slammed shut behind us. We looked back, bewildered. Kayla's brown eyes grew wider than I'd ever seen. My heart sank into my stomach. We both knew we'd entered in on something serious. We knew this was a life or death matter. Right then, our memories went blank. I didn't even remember my name. All we knew was that there was an end to this hallway, and it was not from the way we came in. We regained our composure and continued moving. As we walked, I could tell Kayla was still scared. She had grabbed my hand and was holding on tight. As gunrunners in the battle of the Matrix, we cannot fear anything. However, if even the toughest of us went to this place, he would break down crying like a baby. That is how powerful the hallway was. I don't know how long we walked in terms of distance or time. It seemed like millennia, but it might've only been seconds. It might've been miles or just a few feet. I really couldn't tell. We finally came to a door, which signaled the end of the hallway. I looked back and saw nothing but white. As I reached for the doorknob, our memories started to come back slowly. I opened it and a dimmer light than before showed through. I glanced back and noticed the hallway was gone and all I saw was black. We entered through the door and saw only the light, nothing else. No hallway. No doors. Nothing. The door closed behind us and everything went dark. We were still scared at that point, but nowhere near as much as before. The darkness only lasted for a few seconds. The next thing we saw was a room filled with screens with our images on them. There were no cameras, but the screens showed our every move. We looked to the left and saw an old man with a beard dressed in a white suit.  
"Hello, Frodo. Hello, Kayla. I am the Architect. I created the Matrix."  
He went on to tell us that to bring a mind to life in the past, we had to choose one already plugged in to replace it. Neither of us could do so, for our minds were free.  
"This child you desire to resurrect can only be obtained by the death of one of his immediate family. Ergo, a direct family member who is in the Matrix now must be unplugged to place him back at the time of death. He will survive naturally as a Matrix-born human from that point while the other mind is deceased. Kayla, you have a choice. Who will take his place?"  
The only person alive capable of replacing him was Kayla's mother. If Kayla was to ever know her brother, her mother had to die.  
  
Our minds began to change. My memories came back much similar as they were before. Kayla's changed. Her memories of events after the shooting had changed. She now remembered her brother, and their father, and their stepmother living as a new family. She had new stories to tell me everyday about it. I was the only one who knew of her life before we saved her brother-at the cost of her mother's life.  
Kayla and I became closer as time went on. We married and eventually retired from service on the Marinis, and moved back to Zion. Of all her stories, one story she remembered more than anything else. She was sitting with her neighbor in the hospital waiting room. The men in black suits walked by them every few minutes. Finally, her father came to the waiting room with an old man with a beard dressed in white scrubs. They told her of the bad news. and the good news.  
"Kayla, honey. I'm afraid Mommy's gone, but she left us a new baby brother." Kayla ran up to her father and couldn't let go. Buckets of tears fell down her face.  
"Daddy," she said through her sniffles, "did Mommy name the baby?"  
"Yes, dear. His name is Thomas. Thomas Anderson." 


End file.
